BEFORE SCROLLING TO THE WEB PAGE BELOW ABOUT TINTO BRASS, PLEASE TAKE A LOOK AT THESE NEWS ITEMS, WHICH ARE FAR MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANYTHING I’VE EVER HAD TO SAY:

AMY GOODMAN:     A little-noticed story surfaced a couple of weeks ago in the Army Times newspaper about the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team. “Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months,” reported Army Times staff writer Gina Cavallaro, “the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.” Disturbingly, she writes that “they may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control” as well. The force will be called the chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive Consequence Management Response Force. Its acronym, CCMRF, is pronounced “sea-smurf.” These “sea-smurfs,” Cavallaro reports, have “spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle,” in a combat zone, and now will spend their 20-month “dwell time” — time troops are required to spend to “reset and regenerate after a deployment” — armed and ready to hit the U.S. streets....

FOR THE FULL STORY, CLICK HERE.

It gets worse:

NAOMI WOLF:     On October 1, 2008, President Bush deployed a brigade — which means three to four thousand warriors — somewhere in America. We do not know where they are deployed though citizens have informally reported to me having seen military vehicles and troops in Georgia and Alabama. We do know that their official mandate according to the first report is “crowd control” as well as action in the event of a mass civilian catastrophe. Initial reports described their technology “module package” as involving Tasers and rubber bullets.... The First Brigade is Bush’s force: they are not answerable to Congress or to the Governors of states: they are answerable to the Commander in Chief. In an Alternet posting, I interviewed Air Force Colonel (retired) David Antoon who noted that the troops must obey the president, even if he asks them to arrest Congress or fire on civilians or attack media outlets. If they do not obey orders, he notes, they face five years in prison.... Antoon himself calls the deployment “ominous.” Troops on our streets makes us something less than a democracy: one definition of a police state is when a leader sends his own military units into civilian streets. Meanwhile the civilian policing of citizens is becoming more brutal. Hundreds of preemptive arrests took place in St Paul, dozens of journalists were arrested.... In St. Paul, funds were sent in advance to pay off the lawsuits against police forces that were guaranteed to arise from the planned abuse of citizens. This sort of thing is happening across the country. The tactic has established a closed circle that has turned citizens’ law enforcement agencies into contractors of a state that is directing acts of increasing severity against US citizens. Now a military brigade is being deployed....

FOR THE FULL STORY, CLICK HERE.

Click here to see an interview with Naomi Wolf conducted in early October 2008.

For the past five years or so I hve been hearing rumors that Halliburton has been building (and has now finished building) 800 prisons throughout the USA, not yet functioning, but just waiting for the right crisis. I have not found reliable evidence for the specific quantity, readiness, functionality, locations, or details, but you might be interested in taking a look at page 5 of this Halliburton press release dated 26 January 2006: KBR has been awarded a contract announced by the Department of Homeland Security’s United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) component. The Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity contingency contract is to support ICE facilities and has a maximum total value of $385 million over a five-year term. The contract provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the United States, or to support the rapid development of new programs.... Now, really, what are the chances of “an emergency influx of immigrants into the United States”? And what are the “new programs” that could come under “rapid development”?

FOR THE FULL PRESS RELEASE, CLICK HERE.

NOW, BACK TO THE MAIN PART OF THE WEB PAGE:

Did you happen to record Monty Python’s Flying Circus when it was shown on PBS back in the 1970s?
Do you still have the tapes?
Is there a TIME-LIFE logo at the end?
If so, please write to me. Thank you!

The Works of Tinto Brass

Part 8
FREEDOM AND EROTICISM

Jump ahead to:

Fermo posta Tinto Brass

(a.k.a. P.O. Box Tinto Brass, 1995)

The widely disbelieved story that Brass regularly receives mail from his female fans who confess their sexual adventures and fantasies is actually true. This movie, freely adapted and inspired from such letters, as well as similar published letters, is a laff riot. Much of the humor derives from Riz Ortolani’s music track, which is wildly incongruous in its unerotic bounciness. For reasons that escape me, porn connoisseurs who publish their opinions on the web are displeased with this film. Maybe that’s because they’re porn connoisseurs who wanted another Paprika??? I, on the other hand, am a comedy connoisseur, and so this movie suited me just fine. It consists of eight stories (or nine or ten or eleven or twelve, depending on how you want to count them), and several had me folded over with laughter. With this film, in my opinion at least, Brass came of age as a master of erotica, and had no further need of experimenting.

Yes, that really is Brass’s office. Yes, that really is where he auditions young ladies. My guess is that the kids in the photos on the wall are his grandkids. Stacked around the office are film cans labeled L’urlo and NEROSUBIANCO and so forth. Oooooooo how much I want to dig into those!

Hours and hours on the Internet, getting bleary-eyed with Google, and I still can’t identify all the actors. Can anyone help?

The English dub is censored—very censored—but it’s every bit as funny as the Italian original. See them both.

This movie brings into focus ideas that Brass had not completely articulated in his previous films, and it explains why some of his erotica, unlike almost any other erotica, is completely inoffensive: he’s a female chauvinist. I don’t know if he would ever admit it, but his firm conviction that women are superior to men in every way is obvious from his body of work.

WHERE DID WE HEAR THAT BEFORE? Several musical pieces come from Paprika. The cheesy jazz tune in “Ivana” episode we heard before in Miranda, Paprika, and L’uomo che guarda. The main theme from L’uomo che guarda is re-used here for the “Le mutandine” episode. “Incontri” is the only episode that promises us serious eroticism, but then just as things are about to get really kinky, a bouncy theme from Capriccio is re-used.

SELF-REFERENCES: On the office of Brass’s wall, in addition to posters for some of his films, there is an unused prop from Snack Bar Budapest: a small sign for the Cine Tabù.

The Italian Region-2 PAL DVD, which will not play on most US equipment.	The censored dubbed-into-muffled-English Region-2 PAL DVD, which will not play on most US equipment.

Jacopo Capanna e Guiseppe Perugia presentano
un film di Tinto Brass

Fermo posta Tinto Brass

© Copyright 1995 California Film e Produttori Associati

EPISODE 1: Sguardi (Glances)

EPISODE 2: Il preservativo (The Condom)

EPISODE 3: Le mutandine (The Panties)

EPISODE 4: Videocasalinghi (Home Videos)

EPISODE 5: La telefonata (The Phone Call)

EPISODE 6: Incontri (Meetings)

EPISODE 7: Ho perso te (I Lost You)

EPISODE 8: La segretaria (The Secretary)

EPISODE 9: Stivaletti rosso tango (Red Tango Ankleboots)

Home Schooling:
Teaching Tinto!

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE

Click here to return to beginning